ABSTRACT
The legal and policy obligations are enshrined in numerous documents; the principle has been formally established that "women's rights are human rights." If the twenty-first century is seeing human rights in crisis, the field of women's human rights is experiencing crisis times two. The crisis is twofold, political and financial. But the twenty-first century challenge is to make them permanently meaningful, implemented from the halls of parliaments to the huts of remote villages. The recognition of equality between women and men and the elimination of discrimination against women as integral and necessary to achievement of both human rights and development is the result of a very long process. The women's human rights movement gained momentum from 1990, as preparations for the 1993 World Conference on Human Rights provided a space for making the point that women's rights are human rights and for emphasizing the universality of human rights.
